I’m grateful to Luc for many things, but lately I’m particularly grateful that he keeps tabs on Cass’s reproductive cycle and lets me know when she is most fertile.
He helps remind me to redouble my efforts to keep suitors at bay. I’m not sure palace eunuchs ever had so much fun at work.
A couple of weeks ago, one of my ewes was uncharacteristically friendly with Bravo, and I wondered if she was in season and looking for satisfaction from him. I showed the video to Bill Fosher, and he thought it was pretty weird behavior, but suggested that if the behavior repeated when the ewe ovulated again 17 days later, we’d have an answer.
Well, today was day 17, and #139 was back at it, with Bravo looking rather uncomfortable with the attention.
To further complicate matters, we have a developing love triangle.
The brown fellow who’s trying to get the attention of the ewe is a ram lamb born at the beginning of March. I wrote earlier about the challenges of castrating young male lambs — they’re very good at pulling their testes up into their abdominal cavity when you start messing with them, so it’s quite easy to do an incomplete job. I believe this guy, #708, successfully eluded the Elastrator with at least one of his seeds, turning him into a “crypto-ram.” A testis in the abdominal cavity will still produce testosterone, making him behave like an intact ram, but the temperature up there is too high for sperm to survive, so he’s sterile. He can’t impregnate my ewe, but he thinks he’d like to. I’m not sure if she’s ignoring him because he’s young or because she’s already got a boyfriend.
The drama should be over by tomorrow morning, but I’m afraid this will repeat a couple times a month until I breed the ewes for real in December.
Tagged: 139, bravo, cross-species romance, crypto-ram, estrus, ewe, heat, ovulation, ram lamb, unwanted attention
I saw this play out just after sunrise this morning.
The ewe getting frisky with Bravo is #139, one of my flightiest and least friendly sheep, so I was pretty puzzled. As I was watching her (seemingly) flirt, I remembered that this ewe was bred almost exactly a year ago, so there’s a decent chance she’s in estrus again now. I’m wondering if Bravo is her ram surrogate — any port in a storm? — and if so, relieved that she didn’t look to me. If she’s indeed looking for satisfaction from Bravo, the courtship should repeat in 17 days when she ovulates next. Or maybe she just decided he was a good playmate.
Tagged: 139, bravo, dog, dorset-border leicester, estrus, ewe, flirting, inter-species, livestock guardian dog, maremma, ovulation, play, sheep
I’ve been threatening to write about the new puppy for some time now, but the demands of puppy-raising turn out to be antithetical to reflection on puppy-raising. The girlie, Cass, will be a year old in three weeks, though, so it’s high time to properly introduce her. But this is not that post, as the distractions continue. Since Cass came to live with me, I’ve known in theory that she would eventually become sexually mature, accompanied by all sorts of interesting behavioral changes (for her) and management challenges (for me). Saturday morning, after roughhousing with her, I noticed a spot of blood on my arm, and theory crashed hard into reality. I remembered that Luc had been sniffing her particularly intently earlier that morning;…
